First Career Was Creating Chills, Thrills

Most people expect a makeup artist to improve their looks, but that could be a big mistake if they went to Jim Gillespie.

Gillespie, who's just opened a couple of stores selling fossils, used to be a Hollywood makeup man. While he could make people look good when necessary, he specialized in gruesome.

The green vomit in "The Exorcist," the floating leg in "Jaws," exploding heads and amputated appendages were all stock-in-trade for Gillespie.

The Weatherly man spent 20 years as a special effects makeup artist, and he was so effective he even grossed out a director or two while working on 81 films.

In a never-released movie entitled "Amputation," Gillespie had to create the effect of a man's arm being pulled from his body. He'd wanted the effect to show the victim's intestines being pulled out as well, but the movie's director passed on the idea.

Gillespie, who used to visit university hospital libraries to study what burn victims looked like, once spent six hours a day for five days applying the makeup for a burn victim for the movie "Lionheart." The scene appeared on the screen for three or four seconds.

Gillespie can make people look good too. He's worked on Paula Abdul, Jean Claude Van Damme, Carrie Fisher, Barbara Eden and Nannette Fabray. His magazine covers include Cosmopolitan, Teen, Esquire and Playboy.

The science fiction and horror movies Gillespie watched as a child sparked his earliest attempts at makeup work.

"When I was a kid of about 10 or 12, I used to put ketchup all over my face and lay on the sidewalk to scare people," he said. "I also used to hide between houses covered in ketchup and jump out at people. It's a wonder I never caused anyone a heart attack."

Gillespie was 18 when the movie "The Molly Maguires" was filmed in the area. He knew it was a chance he couldn't pass up.

"For 30 days I bugged the movie's makeup artist to teach me the trade," Gillespie recalled. "He kept telling me to get lost."

Wally Westmore, head of Paramount Pictures' makeup department, finally gave in to Gillespie's persistence and put him to work cutting sponges and later doing makeup on extras.

When filming was finished, Westmore gave the young man his business card and told him if he was ever in Hollywood he'd teach him the trade.

"I went home, took a bath and told my mom I was going out," Gillespie said. "Then I started hitchhiking to California. I had a dollar in my pocket at the time."

Once in Los Angeles, Gillespie spent a week waiting for Westmore to return from Pennsylvania. When he did, the makeup artist kept his promise.